


(will wait for the morning to come)

by contagionangel



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: M/M, Pre-Canon, Pre-Slash, my personal take on the inside of victor's head, written before episode 10
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-19
Updated: 2016-11-19
Packaged: 2018-08-31 19:44:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8591218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/contagionangel/pseuds/contagionangel
Summary: "It's no use, he speaks the language of the ice!" chortles one of the women as she pats a sobbing girl on the back. He'd tried to be smooth and deft in his rejection and had fumbled it with all the impact of bones rattling against the ice in practice. Maybe more. She hit surprisingly hard for how twiggy and delicate she looks. While experimenting with new moves, he plays out a man touched by innocent affections that he cannot accept, who admires the strength of the one he is turning away. She nails all of her jumps in the next practice, smiles with neither malice nor blushing when he gives her pointers on her form.Yakov's eyes are dark when he watches it. "You weren't feeling it at all." he murmurs. "That won't fool a crowd."Victor just nods in response. It's true.





	

**Author's Note:**

> my beta flaked and this isn't, uh, what i originally intended to do with this, but i thought: why not? so, here it is: the making of victor nikiforov.

He grows up on the ice. The sound of it under his feet is the first thing he remembers, pushed toward it by his mother and taking to it like he was born for it, if wobbly and clumsy at first, and for the rest of his life he never stops going back.

 

 

* * *

 

 

In the athletic world, everything is a game of power and control, a matter of speed and timing and persistence, and he chooses where and when to buck off his chains. Changing his jumps in the actual competition and nailing them, making the crowd roar and his coach shout-- but who can walk away from a champion in the making, for doing too well? Growing his hair long once he's older and it's clear he has an entire career, a world ahead, and curling up in the corner with the older girls from the rink, watching the way their eyelashes flutter over their cheeks and practicing it in the mirror. Fumbling through clumsy English in America to get drunk in the practice rink's bathroom with a rival and getting screamed at for the hangover-- but not for getting blown, hormones speaking louder than the language gap, because they _didn't get caught_.

 _Who_ he might fool around with is the one thing Yakov doesn't scream at him for, although he does call him selfish for wasting precious practice and study time and breaking hearts. He's trained too many skaters to be shocked by anything that doesn't relate to the rink. "If I don't see it or hear about it, it never happened." he says. "I can't know anything if you get caught in a scandal, so if you do it, it damned well better be worth it."

It's a little empty, but it's still worth it. Women pulling his hair while his head's between their legs, clamping thighs around him enough to make the roar of blood in his ears feel like the scream of a crowd. He never sleeps with the same person twice and flirts with a lot, lot more than he sleeps with, encouraging puppy-love crushes with advice and roses and charming smiles, sharing vicious grins and clawing across the backs of the ones who are old enough to know better like he is.

He travels the world and sees little of it, the moment they realize that he's a ticket to absolutely crushing the competition at the Grand Prix. His country is proud. That pride creates a blind eye turned to his indiscretions, and he learns to love the game of slipping past the guards and the press, imprints the motions of flushed glee from younger skaters when he lets his hand rest on theirs a little too long in order to tease them, the faltering when he throws up blithe barriers to their immature affections. The motions of men strong enough to fuck him against the wall, the way their shoulders roll and their thighs shudder. Everything is fuel for the moment he feels the music come alive and his skates are the loudest thing in the world, when the crowd's roar is so deafening above the music that he keeps his rhythm entirely from habit.

The only future he ever thinks about is what he's going to win next. Pain and pleasure and trade-offs of control all blur together into the routines, and he flourishes, and he shines, and he knows it and hungers for it more than he's ever hungered for a meal or a body.

When he first takes the Grand Prix gold, he assumes it feels hollow and unreal from the rush. Whatever's missing is probably some aspect of sound or choreography that he'll fill in with pure skill the next time, getting better and better.

 

 

* * *

 

 

He shows up to practice one day with his hair chopped off, his practice clothes switched out for ones that emphasize the broadness of his shoulders, and he walks different, gestures different. Yakov stares mutely as he turns the latest composition into broad and powerful sweeps, dashing strength and raw heat. In androgyny, he'd bloomed himself visually from innocent to coy, and now he plans to become a rugged prince, and then a polished and charming one, circling back around from sensuality to pure elegance.

"You think a shocking image change will buy you a win?" he asks, gruff but not unkind.

In response, Victor grins and launches into a sequence of jumps that he'd never have tried a year prior. The rotations are clean-cut and he never staggers, never drops his hand to the ice-- he knows what he can do is impressive, is still impressive when he holds back, and even in his teens he's learned to stagger the presentation of his progress to make it seem like a constant and unyielding rise rather than the one-step-forward two-steps-back that often happens in actuality. Mistakes in front of the crowd are unacceptable to him. He will never truly push beyond what he knows he can safely manage, and he knows the limits of it all too well. The illusion of ever-refining perfection is a truly thrilling game.

Yakov just shakes his head. He's known Victor too long to be surprised. "You can't run a career off that gimmick forever." he grumbles. "They'll get used to expecting more from you. If you try to change into something you can't be, you'll fail, eventually. If you succeed, they'll get numb to it. Surprise is a tricky thing."

Victor knows that Yakov hasn't seen his wife in months. When the music changes to his free skate, he acts out the shapes of that gradually crumbling void, how it starts with cracks and then drifts. Gradually it builds until shock slams onto the audience as they realize it's become a black hole of grief, then the tired but strong embrace of a new road.

By the end of it, he's panting and sweating and there's a trace of tears in Yakov's eyes. "I'll speak to your choreographer." he says, finally, when he's gotten ahold of himself enough to sound crotchety instead of emotional, and Victor knows that it won't be the last time they have this argument, but that it's over for now.

 

 

* * *

 

 

The world is a blur of books and podiums and a rush of old memories, and he finds himself with a diploma in his hand, another medal, a first love that had ended when he'd realized he was bored, bored, bored. He didn't have to feign the devastation when he'd broken up 'because of the press', because if this vaunted romantic love is so boring, then maybe he really is missing something. He goes back to his hometown to stare at where the rink he learned to love the ice in once stood, and Yakov is angry and awkward on the phone, but oddly comforting. "Who was it--? No, don't answer that, I don't want to know. I think you'd fall in love if there were two of you. It's a pain in the ass to deal with, but it's who you are. No use shedding tears over it."

No use shedding tears over it, he thinks as he acts out the bloom and decay of a first love, speaking in the slice of his skates. It brought him another gold and salvaged a connection after the breakup. His eyes hurt from the camera flash and his knees greatly protested. His mother cried on him from pride and pinched his cheeks, and she said absolutely nothing when he spent a week curled in his room with a hollow chest, but made the stroganoff that nobody could quite match the taste of, not great by anyone's standards but uniquely _theirs_.

He returns to the ice, as he always does, and gets told by those who've known him since he was small that it's incredible how much emotion he pours into what he does. That it makes them feel understood, somehow, when he skates, in ways that he can't manage when speaking to them.

"It's no use, he speaks the language of the ice!" chortles one of the women as she pats a sobbing girl on the back. He'd tried to be smooth and deft in his rejection and had fumbled it with all the impact of bones rattling against the ice in practice. Maybe more. She hit surprisingly hard for how twiggy and delicate she looks. While experimenting with new moves, he plays out a man touched by innocent affections that he cannot accept, who admires the strength of the one he is turning away. She nails all of her jumps in the next practice, smiles with neither malice nor blushing when he gives her pointers on her form.

Yakov's eyes are dark when he watches it. "You weren't feeling it at all." he murmurs. "That won't fool a crowd."

Victor just nods in response. It's true. He doesn't know her well enough to really, truly feel bad for having upset her. The negative attention and teasing was obnoxious and he just wanted to keep his practice uninhibited. "I'll get better at acting." he says. "I suspect I'll need it in the future."

This draws a snort out of Yakov, who shakes his head. "Never before have I met a more vain boy than you. And I work with figure skaters. Perhaps that is why you are the best. But it is my job to make you grow beyond that."

Victor rolls his eyes and drifts off, because he's aged to that point where he resents the expectation. If he wants to fake it and can fake it well enough, why would it even still matter?

To study in caring, he finds issues that he feels distantly sympathetic about and joins a political group that he'd brushed with in college. It eats into his precious time with the ice and doesn't even involve orgasms. Once he's learned to give impassioned speeches about things that are far-off concerns, thinking about the musicians he could have worked with who were jailed for liasons with the same sex or who he met years later than he ought to have because their families were immigrants with little resources for helping them pursue education, he's accepted. Being accepted feels good to anyone, anywhere, but it's exhausting as he scribbles down responsible votes, signs petitions and open letters, and watches things shift barely or not at all.

 

 

* * *

 

 

With third medal in hand, he leaves the world of politics, having gotten bored of snickering at letters from the Council that imply that if he no longer becomes a winning representative for the glory of Russia that his rabble-rousing will no longer be tolerated. Of course he's going to keep winning. At the same time, he keeps outwardly caring just enough to keep in touch with the ones who were fun to drink with, but he doesn't have the will to care in a persistent way.

(The party implodes on itself less than a year later after taking a sharp turn for anti-immigrant, calling for the Justice of what he considers the late Union's biggest bigotries. Maybe he cared more than he thought, because the tear-stained letter from Iosef-born-Hovsep informing him was written with hands that interact with a violin much as he does with the ice, hands that would never have gotten the chance to touch one without luck and persistence due to stations of birth. It mourns the loss of solidarity and fears for the future, apologizes for inability to send any more compositions until those hands have healed from damage taken in a violent alleyway attack, and it makes him feel like he's eaten something spoiled.

This he learns from it once he has left: fear where it was funny, before, to duck into dark corners to mouth until he hears a man gasp. If he cannot compete due to a leg broken in the name of hatred, what will he have left?)

The reputation of an eccentric, closed-off, amusingly and blithely narcissistic man begins to follow him because he allows it. Secretly, he tries being married, once, to see what it was that Yakov experienced, and they end up parting amicably mere months later out of mutual lack of investment. It brings him no closer to the ultimate performance that has begun to take frightening shape in his head, built around whatever is supposed to fill the empty place in his heart when he wins the highest accolades and is not satisfied, whatever it is that he understands so little of that he cannot even identify it. It may be just as well. It would have to be his last performance; how could he top something truly perfect?

Emulation becomes boring off the ice, and so he acts out someone as close to himself as he can manage, aside from the parts that might someday keep him from skating. Pressure mounts harder than it ever has before and he works himself sick, parties himself sick, rests just enough to get back on his feet. Fewer things built around others' emotions have the power to sabotage him, now that he's proven he can do it again and again.

He takes a temperamental younger skater under wing whenever it occurs to him and is convenient. Maybe he sees a little of himself in Plizetsky's passion. He makes promises for meals, practices together, sneak looks at his routines, keeps the ones he remembers and laughs while accepting a verbal barrage he'd take from nobody but Yakov and his mother when he forgets. He doesn't quite feel the level of pride he does at winning when he watches Yuri grow and improve, but he plays father, mentor, brother, crush. For someone so angry, Yuri is surprisingly forgiving, and Yakov grumbles at their mutual lack of restraint in face of the ice's call but is indulgent of this newfound occasional babysitting habit.

Even though he doesn't feel all of the feelings he learns to express, he thinks that maybe, maybe, he feels a little of what created his mother's patience, what makes Yakov stay through tantrums and stresses and potential disasters that even his record of winning could not offset on its own. There's a glimmer of a potential future past competitions there, in coaching, but it's so far-off and vague that he can't afford to get distracted by it.

Victor rebuilds his life around people who are selfish but not cruel. The accusation of only wanting to use people has become repeated often enough that it's begun to actually affect him, so he tries to stick to people who will gladly use him back, with mutual understanding and without exploitation or spite. His nigh-constant competitions when in season become more and more blurred together, and somehow, the ring of the applause tarnishes a little when he realizes he cannot make it get any louder. He has impressed people as much as he can. His surprises are plateauing into a habit of excellence.

Still, he fights, because he knows that he can do it at least one more time, and so long as he can keep going he can't truly imagine doing anything else.

The days seem to get shorter and longer at the same time, and over all these many years, people, and places, he feels older and doesn't at the same time. His body feels old and he knows more than he did, but there's an ache only the ice soothes that's older than the ones in his joints, and he has to work smarter to make up for the places held together with pins and staples that are all too fragile for being made of steel. In hindsight, he can see that it was luck and not genius that kept any injuries out of season, and it's frightening too to have to be careful. He wasn't built for more than a minimum of caution-- it's wearing to exercise what he has of it.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Once he has his fourth win at the Grand Prix Finals, he realizes that despite having filled his life with people he genuinely likes and gotten a peek at a future beyond the adrenaline and pressure, the empty feeling is so large as to remind him of the one he emulated long ago to use Yakov's separation to end the argument about his desire to use the concept of surprise to breathe even more life into his performances. It might be, he reasons, because the season is over, because he loves nothing more than what he does even when he's sick of it, that for how wonderful accolades feel it's the love of performing itself that fuels him onward.

Except it sticks around longer and longer each time, even as he resumes the cycle of climbing the chains of competitions and seeing them through to the end. The next few years, he tries even harder, desperately, to enthrall and welcome and yet alienate his fans, to generate friendships and fierce rivalries, but he's been so many places and met so many people that it reminds him of the awful American movie Groundhog Day. He slumps in the few breaks his body forces him to take, sulks, and Yakov's yelling gets louder. He forgets more promises to Yuri and loses heart to make them. He feels romantic toward someone, perhaps, the first time in his life, chases it as hard as he's ever chased medals and thinks he'll feel it forever, and then leaves the man he fell for during their first real fight and is astonished by how quickly even the grief fades.

He really does love nothing more than the ice, but he's running out of tricks to give it. It's making him feel almost resentful. His sleep becomes more and more ragged and his nightmares become, not of losing, but of being forgotten. He still has fans, but the tension is gone now that he's expected to win, that everyone but the closest inner circle of his life will be unsurprised if he loses and unsurprised when he succeeds. His ploy to create the illusion of constant improvement all those years ago succeeded, but Yakov was right. Worse yet, only a few rivals are brave enough anymore to sincerely aim higher than for the silver in the Finals, and discussions have started to become obsessed with who will take the lower levels-- but it's considered pointless to do more than wait and watch who takes the gold.

It used to be flattering and annoying when younger skaters in smaller competitions bemoaned having ended up in the same ones as him. Now it's just depressing.

His days begin to feel numbered and he begins to really, truly worry about the following season and lose focus on the current one for the first time since childhood. All-nighters become a thing of the past when all day every day feels as dark and lonely as 3am on a moonless night.

He manages to keep it out of any of his skating that makes it to the public eye. Little feels real or meaningful anymore. Can he really, truly be the best in the world? If so, how long can he stay there? Who's out there that has more innovation, more physical prowess and potential, who will overtake what he does? The obsession of those few determined rivals left becomes more and more frenetic as they vie for his attention and fight to top his skills.

No matter how sophisticated the lover or the routine, he hungers until his appetite is all but lost over whatever it is he's starving for. It's not rest-- although he finds himself drinking less with friends and more at home, more before bed, less at a time but more days in a row so that he sweats in his sleep rather than dreams of being alone on dark, thin ice.

Halfway through the season he's working harder to hide the places where his hair might be thinning and working harder than ever to charm his fans into not taking him for granted. The theme he picked for his winning run is "Stay By My Side", but who is he asking? An imaginary lover? His mother, who pushes him away more and more as her health declines when he'd quit and buy her the world if she asked? His coach, who's losing his infinite devotion and comparing him to skaters who are more obedient, less coldhearted in truth, asking again and again why he can't just listen for once?

The looks and health and vigor that let him keep his career going? The ice itself?

Like usual, he dances as if it were to a lover, but he picked it because it felt right, and now he feels lost and adrift wondering why.

He wins, and he wins, and he wins, and it's on polish and fakery more than anything else he's ever done despite the stress and sweat he poured into it. His body tells him over and over again that however much he loves to skate, that skating doesn't love him, not really.

 

 

* * *

 

 

When he takes his fifth gold at the highest tier he can in the world, his head and heart are empty except for the background swirl of incoherent chatter about what he can possibly do next to make it happen again. There's no fulfillment. He smiles and waves and lies to the microphones, though he can't help but stumble and avoid the question when they ask about his plans for next season, and leaves his afterparty early, passes out at the hotel table surrounded by desperate notes on future routines. He caught his reflection in the afterparty bathroom and it seemed to be saying "no future, no future".

The next day the sun wakes him through the curtains he forgot to close, and he takes aspirin for his hangover and realizes he can't remember why he does this. What made it so important to him to keep on like this. The crowd was louder than ever, the loudest it had ever gotten, so why does he feel disappointed in himself?

A few days later, at home, he lays himself out on the couch with his phone and lets his dog curl up in his lap, carefully clears the notifications of Yakov's nagging for him to take a goddamned break. He is, technically, taking a break, just a few minutes to catch up with his Instagram, and then he realizes that he has many, many more notifications than he expected. There's a Youtube video that a few friends have tried to link him, but he's mostly ignored it due to lack of will or energy to watch other skaters, as much as he used to love it.

But Iosef linked it, too, and he doesn't feel guilty for ignoring his friends more and more the past few months, but he feels strangely guilty over the guilt that isn't there and it has the same results. Iosef is the only one who bothered to translate the title rather than just vaguely say "Victor, you gotta get a load of this guy," or something to that effect.

The title is "[Katsuki Yuuri] Tried to Skate Victor's FS Program [Stay Close to Me]". He squints, trying to remember where he's seen that name before, and then recalls having teased Yuri about their names being the same in the same bracket, although he knows enough spoken Japanese (among a smattering of other languages) to know that the intonations are different on the vowels. A skater with mediocre technique and music choices who practically bled earnestness in his expression, earning most of his points on that very expression.

He sighs as he loads it, because cruel humor is not in Iosef's nature, but he doubts that someone who flubs that many jumps in his competitions and loses his rhythm that easily can do such a demanding routine without injuring himself. Preparing for it had been a matter of painfully, persistently clinging to his endurance. The man may not have left much of an impression, but he also has no desire to see another skater mocked or humiliated. Taking the time to properly learn another skater's routine is a waste for most, as well.

The video is a bit shaky but high-definition and appears to be taken at a small rink, like the kind you'd see in a hometown, and the fact it's obviously being taken without the skater's knowledge almost makes him back out-- but the rink. It doesn't look even a little bit like the one he remembers from growing up, but it reminds him of it anyway.

He can't quite understand the muffled speech, but manages to decipher "Yu-chan." and a soft "Please watch." as the camera briefly turns to show a cute young woman. If it's being done as some sort of love confession, he supposes, it's suitable enough for it, although perhaps a little gauche not to have used his own routine. Heart sometimes matters more than quality in these things, he's learned.

The next thing he notices is how even on the slightly chubby face-- charming enough, he supposed, and suited to the innocent longing of the theme-- his own expressions are reflected as exactly as he practiced them himself. It's not spectacularly impressive. How smooth the motions are makes him wonder if the coach or choreographer involved in this Katsuki's life are lacking somehow, though, and he clicks his tongue in irritation, briefly distracted by the thought tangent of the many ways that lack of external resources have unfairly sabotaged skaters he's known.

His attention snaps back to it when the first quads are nailed, because though the execution lacks polish, something in the way it's being skated is really bothering him. No, not bothering, it's not bad, but...he can't do any more but stare intently at it, distracted as he silently absorbs the motions on his screen. There's occasional switching of angles with changes in quality, suggesting more than one person recording and the video having been cut together, but neither Katsuki nor his apparent crush seem to notice, absorbed in the routine in different ways.

The face is familiar, and he idly recalls the skater who had been in the lowest place at an early competition, who'd stared at him and then walked away when he'd offered an autograph on instinct. He hadn't put the face to the name. That's not what's caught him, though.

It's like a click the moment that Katsuki gets into the music, face loosening past the oddly creepy mirroring into something simpler and purer. Still he watches to try and put his finger on what it is that arrests his attention so much about it.

The sudden switch to a closer view of the skater's face as he makes the yearning gestures that Victor spent so long discussing with the choreographer-- that's when it hits him. He narrows his eyes and gazes closer at the last of the jumps. Yes. Katsuki is sincerely feeling the emotions of the music, for sure, but he also skates on-beat with a cadence that makes it feel like he's in the music. And he completed the routine without a single glaring mistake.

It's irritating, because he knows now the difference between genuinely feeling something and realistically faking it. The only way to tell the difference is with a direct comparison, and in the face of this mediocre skater's purity his own is clearly lacking. More points are added in his head toward the benefits of doing the Eros arrangement, relying on the sexuality he knows he can radiate far more easily.

When the song ends with Katsuki panting, the video is still not over. The woman squeals ecstatically, launching into excited chattering, as the camera fumbles and gets shakier, and of course it would appeal to her heart, but something's off.

"That was a perfect copy of Victor!" she crows, and he thinks, ah, a fan. Why didn't that taint the expression, knowing he was skating the routine of another man that she was attracted to? "I thought you'd be depressed or something!" she continues as he blushes and ducks his head.

He makes an affirmative noise. "But, I got bored of feeling depressed, so I got to thinking...I wanted to get my love for skating back."

That draws Victor's attention even more, because that had been what he'd intended to do with the routine, and he'd managed the exact opposite.

The next words sink into him like the slap of a spurned girl or a hit against the ice, and his breath catches in his throat, because he knows he's a narcissist, but-- "When I copied Victor with Yu-chan back then," his brain supplements as he tracks back a bit to listen to it again, "I thought I could remember that."

He remembers something himself. How back when he took his first Youth gold, he wanted to impress his mother and prove that the move to St. Petersburg had been worth it, he'd wanted to prove Yakov wrong about his limits, but beyond the praise he hadn't loved the competition as much as the thrill of learning something new.

Until the first time he'd been approached by another competitor, barely managing to meet the age bracket, not terribly impressive, who'd poured his heart into what he did, and he first heard the words fumbled in clumsy Russian in a country where everything was too loud and bright, "I learned to love skating after seeing you."

It wouldn't have been this particular skater, not with their gaps in ages, but he remembers the thrill at the idea that he could have made someone else love the ice. Love doing what he does. He'd closed it off and forgotten a long, long time ago, and it's bittersweet to remember in the face of the lack of boundaries of rivals like Chris, the angry ambition of Yuri.

The video goes on with whatever Katsuki is starting to say being cut off by the cameras being set away and high-pitched loud voices piping up. "Axel, Lutz, and Loop!" He can hear the woman declare. "Haven't they gotten so much bigger since you last saw them?"

They begin peppering Katsuki with questions, calling him Yuuri. Not dad. Obviously he's close to the family, with Japanese customs toward given names and honorifics, but as the woman apologizes and stutters for her girls behaving like groupies (he has a soft spot for children and they obviously live up to their ridiculous names in enthusiasm), a deeper voice rumbles in as the cameras come back out. And did he catch a "Have you really never had a girlfriend?" in there?

"They're all Yuuri's fans." says the other man, grinning as he skates up. He tosses an arm over Katsuki's shoulder and pulls him close. Definitely a friend of the family. The camera shots are blurs of movement as he declares "Welcome home!", sincerely grinning from ear to ear.

"Nishigori!" blurts Katsuki, flustered, and then--

"Dad!" the small girls exclaim, now visible through each others' lenses as the tiny camerapeople and explaining the oddly low angles of the filming. Nishigori is a name, Victor assumes, because he can't think of a relevant word that would have been used in the context.

The woman is laughing affectionately as the man rucks Katsuki's shirt up to tease him about his belly. That makes Victor's eyebrows raise a bit, because on the one hand, he's always been taught that the heavier you are on the ice, the more likely you are to get hurt. The jumps become a little more impressive in retrospect, but as endearing as the chub is on him, the ice skating world is cruel and the physical work is as demanding and punishing as the judges can be.

This can't be a confession scenario, then, for neither the woman nor her husband to be responded oddly to the fact that he'd skated a love song to her. But there was definitely love in the act, and it was at least partly aimed at her.

The camera is aimed at Katsuki as the big man lets him have some distance to catch his breath.

"You can come here anytime." he says, and tone is hard across language barriers, but it sounds sincere and is the clearest audio on the video yet. "The Nishigori family's always got your back." Ah, so Nishigori was definitely a name, then. The longtime friendship stands through clear even in the grainy parts of the video and the inconsistent audio. The video ends with the girls encouraging him and a soft look on Katsuki's face at the declaration.

It hadn't been an entirely platonic performance, though. Was that a side-effect of the mimicry involved that he missed? No, because when Katsuki had shaken it off and opened up to skate as himself, it had become stronger. It wasn't a bitterly unrequited love, nor a resigned one, but held the desire for companionship above all else, if he recalls correctly.

Victor catches himself scowling a little and and hits replay. It's easy enough to check.

 

 

* * *

 

 

By the fifth playthrough, he's successively stared harder and harder at it, can't stop watching.

By the seventh playthrough, he's texting a friend who can read and write Japanese to figure out the location of the rink-- emblazoned on the wall is "Ice Castle Hasetsu" in English, which will help. He wants to know which hometown this rink is in. Where Yuuri is. He startles for a moment at the realization that he has no idea when he transitioned to thinking of the man as "Yuuri" instead of "Katsuki".

Ninth playthrough, he's got his phone and laptop going at the same time, so he can have the video in his hand as he idly Googles to figure out what travel to Hasetsu might be like. The video has a lot of hits. It would be charming to go and take some tourist pictures in the hot springs town, try the food, take selfies with Yuuri to prove he's a good sport and make the best out of the viral video for both of them.

By the time he's lost count of the replays and begun to pack, he's fired a text off to tell Yakov that he's decided to retire to be a coach, and he realizes with a rush that he's maybe a bit infatuated. It's nice and it's something that he rarely gets to feel. Innocent isn't what's done it for him in the past, but perhaps it helps that Yuuri is unmistakably a grown man. The responding texts that he fails to even read are undoubtedly about how this is a stupid stunt, a passing crush of some kind or another, and he's learned that when it comes to feelings Yakov is always, always right.

He does it anyway, because from the flush on Yuuri's face, the way Yuuri's tongue wrapped around his name and laid it next to that of a cute girl who is likely a childhood friend, he's got a growing certainty that he can make Yuuri fall in love with him. The drama of a relationship could make or break him, but he needs something, something beyond hope and love of skating alone to shake him into places he's never been and strip the nerves off him in official competitions. He can skate the things that Victor can fake but not feel.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Victor is arrogant, and Victor is vain, and Victor shoots off a statement to the press and kisses Yakov's cheek before he leaves in the middle of the night. The plane ride is nothing new and he pops the pills that let him sleep through most of it, because the jetlag and the changeovers are going to be a pain. Apparently there's a hot springs inn still running in Hasetsu, the only one left there, and soaking his aches away sounds like the best thing in the world. This is what he needs, he thinks. Play out one of those indie romantic comedies with himself cast as the manic pixie dream man. Get laid. Stop worrying.

He's never gotten to explore a small town in another country before, any touristing brief and kept to the cities of competitions, and a vacation to try his hand at coaching on someone who's insecure without being nearly so vulnerable as an actual child will be a good learning experience. The fact he'd be doing so with an adult who isn't bad-looking at all and would likely jump at the chance for a fling has faded from incentive into a bonus in the mere hour of packing. This won't be forever, they'll both move on, probably over the worst traits that Victor knows drive people away, but he has few memories in his life that aren't jumbled into the endless cycle of competitions, and as somebody approaching thirty he's suddenly realizing that maybe, maybe, he can keep the ice in some way without making his life revolve around hoarding awards.

The scenery is blanketed by snow during the long car ride from the airport to the inn, and he definitely rushes through the check-in process, because Russian though he may be he is chilled to the bone and aching in places he'd rather not think about. An outdoor hot spring in the cold has gone to the best idea in the universe. He pauses and chats with the woman running the place, wearing traditional clothes in the ever-so-alien traditional building, and startles her with his conversational Japanese. She laughs while she leans over to pet Makkachin gently, cooing over him, and then pauses.

"Ah, you're Victor, right? The ice skater?" she asks suddenly, pressing a hand to her cheek in a soft way, regarding him in a way that is much more effusive than his own mother's but is somehow reminiscent nonetheless. Her face also reminds him of someone else. "I'm Katsuki Hiroko. It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance." Ah. A coincidence? The town is fairly small, though.

He bows in return to her. "Nikiforov Victor." he says, and then on a whim stops to kiss her hand, figuring that as European as he looks he can get away with what would locally be considered rude over-familiarity. It's a good choice, because she titters and swats at his shoulder playfully. "A pleasure to make yours as well, Katsuki-san."

"Welcome to our family inn! It looks like you plan to be staying a while? Yuuri will be so excited. My son who lives and helps out here is a skater." Her voice drops conspiratorily and her eyes sparkle. "He works very hard on what he loves. This will thrill him, because you're his favorite. He's always happy when he makes it into the same competitions."

"Oh? Why am I his favorite?" asks Victor, smiling back. It'd be too blatant a lie for even a deeply friendly stranger to say that it surprises him, but it's just background chatter to him, a lever to push. His brain is processing the fact that Yuuri is, in fact, not only related to her, but living in the very same place he’s staying. If the hot springs are all they’re cracked up to be, he might give marriage another try just for that.

She hmms a bit. "It's hard to say. He's seen you on TV since he was very small, and you seemed to leave a big impression, going by his choice of career." Katsuki-san laughs a little. "But he's said he likes the way you can pull out any emotion on the ice and skate with such precision. Even when he feels like you could be doing more, he still admires your dedication to pacing since he struggles with it. Overall he seems to think you are a very good actor."

This throws Victor a little, because he should have expected better from a fellow professional, but he'd assumed that it would be something other than those things. He's old enough now to know that insincerity is considered a grave sin among many, so the fact that it would impress on someone as emotional as that to take a place of value? Well.

"Oh!" she thinks to add. "I forgot the thing that he says over and over again. He loves how you never cease to surprise him, no matter what."

If he wasn't truly infatuated before, he is now, because it's flattering for someone with the innocence to have expressed the theme of his own routine far better than he did to have been watching him with such devotion for so long. He'll play up the idol angle if he has to, but Yuuri seems to at least have some warning of Victor's fickle nature and insincerity, and it helps banish the lingering sense that maybe he should feel bad for what he's doing.

She blinks at the look on his face, understated and friendly, and speaks a bit more. "Please play nice with my son." she says, and her cheer is still there and still real, but. "His heart needs to be handled with care."

"His heart?" asks Victor, a bit startled that she'd caught on to him immediately. "Do you mean as a coach? That’s why I came here."

"Oh, you know what I mean." she says airily. "Now, didn't you want to get to the springs? Remember to wash up in the showers first."

"Yes. I'll do that. Thank you." Victor replies. Having a parent point out to him that he should avoid cruelty if they goes for a fling has made him tense up even more. It doesn't seem to be a busy season, so hopefully it'll be quiet.

It does, in fact, turn out to be the best idea in the universe, and he wonders if Hasetsu is heaven. Low to no traffic, friendly people, and hot springs. His spine gives a massive crack at one point during the soak, and he finds himself breathing easier in the clear and cold air than he had in weeks. Between an appetite lost from travel and stress and his intensive dieting as a skater, he hadn't really gotten to try much of the local food the few times he'd been in Japan. What little he did try was created with tourists like him in mind, not really, truly local. The inn is homey and reminds him of the favorite places he'd stayed in other countries, the ones that are favorite in hindsight because he hadn't appreciated it as much as he should have.

For the first time he can remember in ages, his mind is clear of the weight of his career, and he's relaxing. It's terrifying. It's incredible. He has no clue what to do with himself, now that he's arrived here, and it's a novel experience. Should he be friendly? Seductive? Yuuri is impressed with his ability to trade-off roles at the drop of a hat, apparently, recognizes it-- but what role will he want?

Probably not a nervous wreck, he tells himself. His reputation is that of an egocentric. It's not entirely unwarranted. It calms him down a bit to picture the look on Yuuri's face when he discovers that he's there-- will he shut down or walk away like he did at the airport, at first? Will he be flustered? He's definitely going to be flustered. Victor adores flustering people.

His decision to take advantage of the springs instead of heading straight to bed turns out to be a delightfully fortuitous one. Like a scene in one of the awful romantic comedies that Victor is unabashed about enjoying, the door leading from the shower to the springs slams open, and standing there all chub and bundled in cozy clothes is Yuuri himself, gaping and reeling. It's cute.

"Victor." he says, soft, shaken. His eyes are wide behind the glasses. "Why? Here?" He looks like he expects to pinch himself and wake up, and Victor supposes that it's likely a truly surreal moment. He is naked. He's not actually sexually attracted to himself, but he's got eyes.

He pulls the cloth off his head and carefully stands himself up, lightheaded and basking in the moment. There's no concept of shame in his mind that he cares to subscribe to. The timing is so perfect that it might as well be fate.

With his usual melodramatic flourish, he extends his hand in a beckoning gesture. "Yuuri," he says, voice sly and cheerful and a bit seductive, "from this day on, I'm coaching you." Warm, mischievous, all too fond of getting people embarrassed. "I'll make you win the Grand Prix Final." He winks.

Yuuri makes a truly astonishing and gratifying noise in response, starting low and increasing steadily in volume and pitch as the words process. Victor's ears are ringing. He grins wider as he goes to retrieve his towel as nonchalantly as he can, although he's careful to bend over at the best possible angle to give a magnificent view of his hind end. There have been poems written to that butt. He's allowed to be proud of it.

Either Yuuri ran out of breath to continue that shocked exclamation or it's reached a pitch only dogs can hear. He looks frozen in place.

Victor settles a friendly hand on his shoulder. "Are you still breathing?" he asks.

"Are you still naked?" Yuri mumbles in response, eyelashes fluttering from nerves and astonishment. As if he'll blink and Victor will be gone, or, at least, fully clothed.

"Well, I'm wearing a towel now." says Victor unhelpfully. He feels ten years younger and also maybe like his face is going to freeze this way.

Yuuri readjusts his glasses, blinking some more. “This is happening. ...Maybe.” he mutters to himself.

He seems to go into polite handling-a-guest mode on autopilot and gives Victor a small tour, going through rote chatter for tourists as if he were sleepwalking through it. The thin robes are soft and comfortable in the toasty-warm inn. It’s become a game to see if he can get Yuuri to glance at him, because every time he does, he double-takes and falters for a moment before resuming the detached inn staff act by sheer force of habit.

This is what he first learns after meeting Yuuri: that when Yuuri is in shock, he goes out of his own head and acts on muscle memory. A useful thing to know as a coach. He’s pleased by the things he’s learning that he can work with.

Something in Victor’s chest feels so full that it could overflow. He feels...comfortable. Whatever he’d expected from doing this, he wasn’t anticipating it feeling this cozy. Conversation drifts away as Yuuri settles him down and brings a carafe and a delightfully tiny cup, pours sweet and warm rice wine to help him unwind from the long hours of travel.

With all duties as host resolved for the moment, Yuuri gets over his aversion to looking directly at Victor’s face and settles into mute staring, seeming to phase out. Victor types up notes on his phone about things he’s noticed and questions he wants to ask-- he’s imagining Yuuri growing up in this place, and the straw floor-mats and exposed support beams, the paper screen doors meaning home to him, like the way squat brick apartment buildings make Victor think of the apartment he shared with his mom through his teens. For some reason, ever more so since having met him, even without any meaningful interactions-- he wants to know every part of Yuuri's story. He wants to know Yuuri inside and out. He's never felt this much burning curiosity about another human being before, and it's surprising him, because he can't think of any logical reason for it.

The steam of the springs and the bite of the winter snow, the gentle heat of the alcohol, the family’s tendency toward chubby cheeks and expressive eyes, all these things seem to suit Yuuri and fold into his identity. Before long Victor catches himself dozing, Makkachin having decided that it’s a good time to worm into his lap, and he thinks he maybe could sit here forever in this intentionally welcoming family home feeling warmed from the inside out, being stared at by a shy and awkward skater who’s all heart and little else as if he arrived from another planet.

 

 

* * *

 

 

With five Grand Prix Final golds under his belt, at age twenty-seven, for the first time, the aching emptiness in Victor’s chest is shrinking, and he maybe falls a little bit in love.

**Author's Note:**

> if you're up to it, feedback is appreciated. this fic wouldn't leave me alone and i wrote it in a rush-- my apologies for any awkward grammar, typos, or inconsistency and problems in flow.


End file.
